As cofounder of GitHub, the world's largest and most active Git hosting website, Tom Preston-Werner possesses inside knowledge of the Git ecosystem and how it is changing the way in which code collaboration is done. Tom is responsible for both low-level system architecture scaling and user interface design/usability. He's currently obsessed with finding ways to marry the productivity of Ruby with the high concurrency prowess of Erlang.

Git is the distributed version control system that's taking the world by storm. The Linux kernel, Ruby on Rails, and now even Erlang/OTP have all chosen it as their VCS of choice. This talk will focus on mastering the handful of commands that comprise 90% of the functionality you will use on a day-to-day basis. I'll kick things off with the best method to install Git on your favorite platform. Next up is creating local repositories, staging/adding files (all about the index), making commits, and viewing history. From there you'll learnto share your repositories with others via GitHub, fetch and merge changes that others make, and resolve conflicts. I'll also introduce a few common workflows that you can use to streamline collaborative development. Each step of the way I'll demonstrate the commands and explain what's happening under the hood to help you establish a proper mental model that will enable you to master the more complex parts of Git with ease. Even if you already know Git, there should be something new for you in this talk. By the end of the session you will be well on your way to using Git to make your life easier than you ever thought possible!